Way of the Warrior
by Ananke
Summary: For Gabrielle, Xena's end was only the beginning.
1. Leaving Fuji, a new dawn

Disclaimer: Studios USA and various other entities own Xena: Warrior Princess and all related characters. No copyright infringement intended.  
Summary: For Gabrielle, Xena's end was only the beginning. A Friend In Need spoilers. Beginning of a series.  
  
*  
From day to day my journey,  
The long pilgrimage before me.  
From night to night, my journey,  
The stories that will never be again.  
(Enya, Book of Days)  
*  
Anastay, my daughter of resurrection.  
  
You are like her; however you might in future years seek to deny the resemblance, with your piercing gaze and might of will. These scrolls…my final, and the ones I know will be the most difficult for you to accept.   
  
You are but hours old, nestled against my breast, and they try to tell me that I have years of motherhood to come in which to savor these small joys. I know better, the years passed have taught me as much. Nothing can last that is worth having. Oh, that I could stay with you…what will you be? A warrior? Where will you travel? In your sister's footsteps, to distant lands with words of peace?  
  
Both, perhaps. Your eyes tell me that you are no warrior, but they also speak of no rest. That, I think, is why I have been able to nurse you, claim you, and accept you for what you are now…my legacy…and not what you once were, the soul of Xena. In the short time I have had you by my side; I have loved you freely, and selfishly. You are everything that was, and all that can ever be. I know that the others wait just beyond the doorway, wondering how I can lay claim to loving you so, if I've loved anything or anyone at all since Xena.  
  
I have, by the gods. I have. Just not enough.  
  
She was my soul mate, Anastay. Someday I hope you may find someone to share the bond with, someone who can teach you the depths of devotion the fates decree I can never show you myself.  
  
Xena and I…we were bonded, heart to heart and soul to soul, by blood spilled and by tears brushed away, and by lack of it all. We were friends, and lovers, mother and child, and enemies as well. It was beyond anything within my power to put to word or scroll.  
  
And then she left my side.   
  
Japa was an utterly foreign land of mist and strange beauty. I never dreamed that it would be the last battlefield of the warrior princess, yet eventually; I thought it would prove the same for myself.  
  
The first hours after sunset were the most hellish. A few moments after Xena had disappeared, I pulled myself together and uncapped the urn holding her ashes, dipping my hand into the collection of powder and bones, lifting spare amounts to my fingertips and turning to sprinkle them into the fountain. Nothing happened, and I forced myself to shut the urn, shuddering as I dropped it and scrubbed my hands free of the remnants in a crystalline clean expanse of water.   
  
Somehow, I later gathered the strange little collection of ashes and descended Fuji…even Olympus had never seemed so utterly desolate and otherworldly. I recall that the pathway back down to Higuchi was filled with silent spectators, men, women, and children with shy eyes and gaping, staggered expressions, some carrying lanterns, others tributes of cherry blossoms. It seemed incomprehensible to them that such a warrior had been bested, and even more incomprehensible that Yodoshi's reign of terror was finished.   
  
I pushed past them, brushing off their questions and pleas, their small pities, and went in search of Xena's armor. The field was bloody, and stank of rotting death, but I followed instinct to a position well away from the place of her death and dug bare-handed for hours, determined to retrieve what Xena had so willingly abandoned. If she had intended to symbolize final burials, I intended to rip the symbolism from her. Despite my earlier state of confusion while watching the sunset, dawn had broken the dam of emotions…I fought Xena's pleas to accept the inevitable, fought requiem with all I had in me. I wanted them…her…to feel my pain, I was afraid to let go of it. Afraid to risk giving in, afraid to accept the fact that I was more alone than I had ever been since Hope and the rift, and utterly terrified of acknowledging that for the first time since I had joined up with her, there was to be no end to that loneliness.  
  
Xena was gone, forever. Oh, I knew even then that there would be other incarnations, other legends with her wild spirit and perhaps even dark hair and eyes as deep and clear as Poseidon's realm. But even now, the fact remains as it did then…Xena is gone, forever. What she embodied can never be recaptured.  
  
I had her scabbard packed onto my back when she appeared to me, kneeling at my side and halting my hands. "Leave the rest there." Her voice was flinty, familiar, and it startled me far more than the touch.   
  
I leapt up, fell back momentarily, before regaining some semblance of control and returning her look. "You may need your armor someday."  
  
"No." Xena shook her head, a wry smile twisting her lips. "I won't."  
  
"Xena." I wanted to take hold of her, shake her, but I somehow thought that it would do no good. Whether Xena was beyond heeding such…earthly…pleas, or was simply blocking them away as she did so many of the things that could hurt her, I had no idea, but it was clear that my words would have no effect. She was a beautiful, stubborn spirit.  
  
"Gabrielle." Her voice hardened, glare blue and brilliant and unyielding. Greater warriors than I had been felled by that glare, and I was hardly immune to its effect, even knowing her as well as I did….as well as I had thought I knew her. "You once made me promise that if something happened to you, I would not become a monster. I'm only asking you the same. I promised you. You promise me, Gabrielle."  
  
"Things were so different then."  
  
"Yes, they were. We became different people. You've become a far stronger person than I ever was. I didn't believe myself capable of upholding that promise…I wasn't capable. Each time I lost you, lost my family, I lost more and more of myself. But you're stronger, Gabrielle." Her words had become fierce and rushed, eyes glimmering just as they had on Mount Fuji. "And you can't begin to conceive of what the fates have planned for you now. Keep your strength for the battles to come."  
  
"I want you by my side for those battles, Xena."  
  
"You don't need me by your side, when you've got me in your heart, in your mind. Everything I knew I gave to you. I can't stay around and limit you, Gabrielle. I can't have you looking over your shoulder for my opinion on every battle, every strategy. That's the surest way to lead you into a fatal mistake. That, I will not do."  
  
"So you're…you're just going to leave, is that it, after you swore I wouldn't lose you?" My voice must have broken, I know my heart did.  
  
"I'm already partly gone." Those few words were far softer and far more cutting than any of the rest had been, and she shook her head, smiling sadly. "And soon I won't be tied here at all. You'll learn to move on, Gabrielle. I promise you that. I promise you that the pain isn't forever."  
  
"Don't leave me now, Xena." I pleaded, terrified by her words and all that they implied.   
  
"I'm not going to leave you entirely until you're ready, bard."   
  
"Gods, I must sound like an orphaned child!" I flew into frenzy in that instant, kicking the dirt beneath my boots with too much force, successfully concealing the formerly half buried armor.  
  
Her smile slanted. "I have a habit of leaving those around."  
  
I had to laugh, if painfully, dusting off my hands and knees. "What am I going to do without you, Xena?"  
  
"Live." Xena said simply, reaching out to tap my cheek, a touch barely there. "Live."   
  
And then she was gone again, and my mood no better than ever as I marched back towards Higuchi. The closer I got the more riled I felt, the more frustrated. I was at an absolute loss.  
  
In the end, it wasn't Xena who first forced me to look past my own moodiness and discontent after all…it was a conflict of a different nature. It was a street, one of Higuchi's scorched ones, and the crowds were brushing forward, jeering and chiding. By the time I had shaken free of my reverie and put a hand to the chakram at my hip, the fracas was louder, the spectators circling around two figures in the middle of the thoroughfare. The larger…and armed…of the two I recognized at once, having spoken to him many times before the battle. Then Kado, Ghost killer's son, had seemed a gentle sort. At that moment, in a Higuchi plaza, he appeared to be attempting murder.   
  
"What do you think you're doing?!" My voice must have been loud enough, the crowds parted with astonishing swiftness, allowing met to stride up and pull him away from the girl he held in a choke hold.  
  
The young woman scrambled to her feet and rushed to my side, taking cover behind me, gasping and wide-eyed. Though I had to fight back a kernel of irritation at her nearness and the distraction, I faced Kado with a composed face and what I hoped were calm tones. "What did she do to you?"  
  
"She was with the coward who killed Xena." My young bushi acquaintance spat, shaking the katana he held…Xena's, I realized. It did not help my mood.  
  
"And he at least wielded his weapon to destroy warriors, instead of stabbing at mere spirits and threatening the weak!" The girl cried out from behind me.   
  
"Stop it." Perhaps my voice started out at a whisper, but neither appeared to be listening…the crowds pressed in, noise greater than ever, and Kado practically lunged to my rear in an attempt to grab his victim. With a kick that would have done Xena proud, she broke free of him in an instant, robes swirling as she dove to my other side. "He had courage!"  
  
"Then you will be honored to join him in death."  
  
"Stop it, both of you!" When even a shout failed to draw them away from the confrontation, I grabbed the young samurai hopeful by his tunic and shook. "Look at you! Is this honorable, attacking an unarmed girl before hundreds?"  
  
Eyes narrowing, Kado nonetheless stepped back, head snapping back sharply at the rebuke. Glaring at him, I turned and faced the mass of spectators. "And you! Were all you fine samurai going to stand there and let her be slaughtered? Shouldn't you be above such petty retribution?!"  
  
The crowds murmured lightly in disappointment before dispersing, a few of the men scowling and threatening under their breath. I ignored both they and Kado, turning to detach the young rebel from my side. "Who are you?" I demanded, uncaring if my tones were rude.   
  
The girl bowed her way to the ground in subjugation, eyes angling up only briefly; in what I suspected then and know for certain now was challenge. "I am only an honored widow, Heika."  
  
Perhaps it was the more than blatantly implied mockery that cracked my control, or the fact that she looked achingly similar to Akemi, or perhaps it was simply her connection to the bastard who had murdered my soul mate, but I…I broke apart for a moment. I drew the katana I carried on my raw and tender back, and lifted it…and then it was Kado of all of them that drew forward, grasping my wrists and wresting the sword from my grip with surprising ease. For a long moment that seemed all he would do, the stranger who had his father's dignity and a burning desire for revenge that I understood all too well, with my fists balled and ready to hit and the murmured fear of hundreds surrounding us. Eventually, I reached out to take the weapon back, and he threw it forward, striking my face with its tip once, twice, thrice. It stung, brutally, and even as I struck the blade aside, I felt tears rise to my eyes and fall just as quickly.   
  
We stood there for a long moment, Kado-sama and I, with that katana at my throat, before he gently replaced it in Xena's sheath on my back. "Do not spoil your own lesson, Sensei." He advised softly, sharply.  
  
"I'm sorry." I think those were my words to the woman I had threatened, but they are obscured by time and the memory of her eyes. Terrified, disappointed, yet ferocious, the eyes of a young dead creature that had no dignity but that of worship, and even that small dignity I had attempted to take from her in a moment of blind rage. How I hated the moments of blind rage…the warrior moments. It seemed ceaselessly unfair, the lack of control, the inner warfare between all I had been and what I had become.  
  
Bending, I made small sounds in my throat to comfort her, as I had done with Hope and Eve. Eventually, she drew forward again, and I took her hands in mine, forcing a smile. "Tell me how I can make it up to you." I coaxed, and she frowned upward, youthful superciliousness littering her voice, accentuated by a tongue I had only just learned.  
  
"Take me with you."  
  
It was I who drew back then, standing and staring down at her. "No. I won't do that. I would rather kill you."  
  
Her laughter was soft, abandoned. "If you leave me here, I will know nothing but suffocating ignorance."  
  
"Treasure it." I turned, wanting as far away as possible. It was too much to take in at one time, Xena's death, and the sudden responsibility she seemed to have cast upon me, and the muddle of loathing and respect to be found with it.  
  
"She said that you were wise, the Warrior Princess." The girl had come to her feet and followed me by then, dark hair tumbling free of its confines, and for the moment no one else seemed to exist in the world, only the pair of us and the Ghostkiller's son, at my shoulder, silently watching, tense but not striking. "Before the battle, she spoke to me. She told me to approach you. She said that you would understand me. I must leave here! This place, these people, will kill me! I was meant for more! She said that you would understand!"  
  
That was before she knew who you respected, I thought darkly, but spoke only calm words, measured and distant. "She may have been right on at least one count."  
  
I'm going to join up with Xena. I'm going to be a warrior, like her.  
  
I was meant to do so much more…  
  
I found myself sighing, meeting her expectant look with my best attempt at unsympathetic frustration. "I suppose you won't stay here?"  
  
Her chin jutted out. "I would rather you kill me."  
  
"Very funny. Don't tempt me." Turning away, I headed back off towards the docks, reassured by the swift parting of the crowds and the swift footfalls behind me. "I may never come back here, you know. If you have family…"  
  
"I have no one now."  
  
Once again ignoring the implied pride and insult, I focused my sternest look on her. "Somewhere down the road, when you find that you miss someone, you can remember that I warned you." Pausing, I had to take her in…pale, impatient, a weeping willow of sorts. "You need better clothing. Samurai wear for now, until you become accustomed to less modest gear. Those robes will cause you nothing but trouble. They tear easily, I think, and you won't be able to run in them. The way will be hard."  
  
She only smiled at me, brilliantly and oddly, and it was Kado who spoke, voice tense and hard.  
  
"This one does not deserve to wear the attire of a samurai."  
  
"And I do?" His judgment struck me as enormously comical, despite my tiredness and dark mood.  
  
"You are not Xena, true." I felt his eyes boring into me, even as I stiffened. "Xena had no master, she was fully attuned to bushido, the way of the warrior…but it went far deeper. The Warrior Princess died as she lived, with complete sincerity and honor. There was never any doubt for your friend, she came to know her path and recognize the likelihood of its destination. You do not find the same calm within you when faced by battle or death. You are servant to your doubts. Yet…you are her chosen. You are worthy. But her…this one…" His hand waved rudely, and I watched a crimson stole up my young foreigner's face.  
  
"…may just be my chosen yet." The words poured from my mouth unwanted. The girl whom I had taken on as apprentice yet knew not the name of stiffened beside me, her breath sucked in so sharply I feared for her health.  
  
"I do not believe you capable of such folly." His tones held genuine agitation.  
  
I had to mask another sigh of impatience. "Kado, I am not a naïve farm girl. This woman…child…is only following what she was taught. Apparently Xena's death was honorable enough to everyone but you and I. I can't very well punish her for the only customs she has ever known. I trust Xena. If she sent her to me, she has a reason."  
  
Or two, I secretly feared, but it seemed something best kept from the Ghost killer's son. He was reckless enough as it was, and I was tired of death in my shadow.  
  
"She is a Heika…a queen!" The foreign girl burst out. "You should respect her honored opinion!"  
  
Kado-sama sighed. "You will come to regret this."  
  
I somehow suspected that he was all too right, but only nodded and smiled slightly, drawing away. "We need horses if they can be arranged, and provisions. You won't see either of us again."  
  
"We leave so soon?" My new companion stared at me.  
  
"I have no reason to stay here." For a moment, Xena's armor and in truth Xena's spirit made me doubt my own declaration, but I forced myself to rally and remain calm. Perhaps only Kado noticed the shaking of my fingers on the chakram, his lips softened briefly, head angling upward. "And it's a long road home. I need to go to Chin, find Eve…"  
  
Eve.  
  
I had no way of knowing then whether or not she already knew of her mother, if Michael or Ares or Aphrodite had gotten to her first, but I prayed not. Eve was all I had left at that point, and I wanted to be there to catch the first tears. Xena had always caught mine. A warm, sharp pain radiated from my hand, and I glanced down to see that I had gripped the chakram tightly enough to slice into the dirty and cold skin. I only smeared the blood on the blue tunic I had worn for the past day and night, removing it and dropping it into the water that lapped at the edge of the pier.  
  
The chakram would remain bloody and untouched until long after Japa was a bitter memory. 


	2. To Chin and Eve

Disclaimer: Xena: Warrior Princess and all related characters owned by Studios USA and Ren-Pics and anyone but I. No copyright infringement is intended.

Note: An update! Fall over with shock! More will be coming, but I prefer quality over quantity so I refuse to randomly hit the keyboard and upload. Therefore I have to wait until I have time to sit down and write to do so. Sorry for any formatting errors. Is anyone else seeing square is place of punctuation? 

---

         Some hours after Kado had departed to arrange our transportation I stood on a Higuchi road, pressed against the wall, observing the bedlam of normal daily life, a sort of existence those people had been without for many years. There was ash everywhere, and a lingering stench of death bequeathed by those not saved by my water tower, but there also seemed to be new life in the city, as if a cloud…or forty thousand and one…had been lifted. Tears from the smoke and far more stung my eyes but I felt too tired to brush them away, too tired to do anything but watch silently as the memories danced past blurrily.

The foreign girl-woman waited patiently several feet away, holding her head rigid and her hands behind her back. The samurai wear Kado had grudgingly found for her was far too large and engulfed her tiny body, but she seemed not to notice, eyes half closed and tilted upward. I wondered briefly if it was poetry she was scripting in that mind of hers, a mind I already suspected to be too naive, too canny, and too manipulative for the good of any of us.

"Sensei!" It was Kado who came around the corner and latched onto my elbow when I wavered in my stance, his face bearing startled dismay. 

"I'm fine."

"You are exhausted, Heika." My serene charge broke free of her reverie as suddenly as she had entered it, coming to my other side and fussing. 

Shaking them both off, I reached downward, the feel of the chakram at my hip oddly reassuring. It was sticky with blood, but I had no time then to linger on the thought of it, or desire to wash it away. "Did you arrange for the horses and supplies?" After a brief struggle, my voice came and I sighed, turning to address the man hovering beside me.

"You should stay." He avoided the question bravely enough for a neophyte in the precarious skill of bardic coddling. "According to legend, Yodoshi's estate has been abandoned since Akemi's great crime. Only spirits, both evil and slave, have inhabited it. The spirits will be gone now, and the estate is your remuneration…"

"Spoils of war?" Disgust filled me for a moment, nearly toppled me, and I clenched my fists and turned, somehow silencing him, if only briefly, with a single look. "Do you believe me the sort to want them?"

"What you want is of no interest. Rewards are as relentless as punishment. If you do not claim your due, others will take offense and injury will be added to insult. It is life."

"It wasn't I who saved those souls, Kado." Pressing a finger to my temple, I fought back a wave of dizziness for not the first time that day, focusing my gaze on the two of them, the girl suddenly silent but still unblinkingly judgmental with her large, pitiless eyes. "It was Xena. I want nothing that she earned." Most of the time, I admitted even then, what Xena had earned in battle was far from worth having, anyhow.

The Ghost killer's son seemed less than thrilled by my rejection, and exchanged a look of somewhat surprising shared frustration with the girl he had taken such a dislike to not long earlier. "You will not last the journey if you do not rest beforehand." Briefly, he seemed to hesitate, before reaching out to touch my arm. "You appear much more tired than I suspect your stubborn nature allows you to admit."

_This is my stubborn young friend, Gabrielle…uh…we bunk together, I have to make sure she sleeps against the wall, 'cause she prefers to leap before she looks._

Xena had used that turn of phrase to introduce me to innkeepers countless times, usually as a humorously shielded warning or a way to get past less than open-minded proprietors, but I had never listened, never paid proper heed, and in the end had always proven her right, sneaking right over her and out of bed to go downstairs and get embroiled in some bar fight, going outside for a walk and almost falling into the nearby pond...and notoriously light sleeper she was, Xena had always indulged me and let me learn my own lessons, even if she ended up rescuing me from them.

Of course, she wasn't there for the rescue any more.

"I get the point." I found myself muttering and looking around for her spirit, but she was nowhere to be seen. And as for Kado, when I turned to face him once more he had arms crossed and the most long-suffering, patronizing look on his face…he harkened back to Eve, badly. It was a needed reminder of where I was and where it was I needed to be going…and how difficult the trail and task would be. "We can spare a day's layover there to rest, two at the most." I finally offered the concession reluctantly, earning a visible slump of relief from him and little more than a foot stomp from the other member of our trio.

"We should move ahead." The girl overcame her frustration to say at last, arms crossing as well, eyes flashing. 

"You just told me that I was exhausted." Turning to look at her, I had to sigh.

"If we bargain well, we may be able to hire a caravan." The dainty, elegant head tilted in thought. "You can rest on the journey."

"Or be attacked on the road." Kado inserted. "Gabrielle would not rest well. She would worry."

"What is it that I have to worry about, aside from living the rest of my life without Xena?" I broke up their little argument by striding between them, staring at each in turn. In truth, at that moment I wanted both of them to disappear. The last thing I felt like was having the company of a constantly arguing pair. The girl reminded me oddly of Amarice or Varia with her not so unforeseen if unknown schemes and Kado seemed a Hercules, or Virgil, with his quiet and often bordering on suffocating heroism…and how I missed our old friends at that particular time. I would have paid a wealth of dinars for one familiar face or hug then.

Amarice, gone to the Amazon Land of the Dead with so much unsaid between us…the wrongness of it. I heard all, the fast talking of the Ghost Killer's son and the nervous, excited chatter of the villagers, a ship's horn in the distance…I saw all as well, the smoke and the tired faces, but from a distance, locked in my memories.

"The decision is yours always, Sensei, but I remind you that the trade roads are dangerous, and you still unhealed..." Kado tapped my arm again impatiently and returned my stare. 

"I've done dangerous before." Though my tones were purposefully brushed with softness, I intended for him to know that I would brook no question. He was all too right, the trade roads that ran the expanse of Japa and Chin and made way to Rome were dangerous…but it was for me to discipline myself to survive them. There was no Xena then for my protection, and at that particular time I was still far too angry to have accepted her help even supposing she had offered. "And yes, I've done it alone, before you begin to worry."

The girl's chin tilted up, mirth clearly and swiftly shunted from her eyes. "Leave him here, he would only hinder us. I will never dare to worry in your company, Heika." 

"Little liar." Nonetheless, I felt a smile rise to my own eyes. "Is that what I'm supposed to call you, or do you have a name?

"I am called Chiko." 

"Meaning arrow..." Kado noted scornfully.

"…and also meaning pledge." Chiko's gaze was solid ice. 

"Your pledges are hardly in question, only the worth of them."

"Suppose we call you Chika." I overrode Kado and offered the suggestion off the top of my head, recalling a name I had read in a scroll, only days ago. "If I remember right, it means near."

"Yes." Her arms crossed primly. "I like it, Heika."

"My name is Gabrielle." Queen and teacher, I felt like neither at the time, and their deference, however sincere, was more irritating than any I had encountered before.

"It is fortunate that you have transcended it." Chika agreed, face reflecting utter seriousness.

Swallowing any of a hundred retorts, I headed for the pack of horses Kado had left several feet away, picking a dark mare as my own. Horses were never my favorite choice of transportation and truthfully, Anastay, they've never become such, despite the time I've spent on them since. But the mare and I reached an understanding and I suspected we would get along far better than either of our companions would, or than I would with either of those companions. "I think I'll call you Harmony." I whispered in a silky ear, and a willing neigh was my reward. Turning back, I forced a smile for the other two of our group. "Two days respite at Akemi's home, Kado-sama, and then we go west."

The journey itself only took little more than an hour, heralded by running village children. Clearly, none of them had any intention of moving beyond the wind torn, gaping remnants of once massive gates. Even Chika looked repelled, though she bravely tucked in her chin and kicked her horse into cantering through them first. After a long-suffering look cast in my general direction, Kado did the same, quickly reassembling by her side. I took my time, the feel of the chakram at my hip and the urn in the opposite saddlebag somehow steadying. 

I'd seen ghosts before, after all. Marcus had been wonderful, and Cyrene just Cyrene…of course that vision of Joxer had been false, and Hope…I had quit long before then trying to decipher or fearing anything related to Hope. Akemi…well, there was Akemi. If anything her home inspired more hostility in me than fear.

_The place looks different, a little rattier than ever._

"I was beginning to think you weren't really here, Princess Smart Aleck, just some empty reflection, maybe a figment of my mind. But I make you a lot more tactful in my imagination." Cracking a smile despite myself, I let Xena's old snooty tones draw me towards the dilapidated central courtyard, swinging down from Harmony and motioning to the other two to join me.

_Funny, Gabrielle._ _I'm not here most of the time, who would want to be? When you move on to Aegyptus, maybe I'll stick to your side more. I've been cooling my heels in Elysia. Do you know, I think Solans shrunk another inch… must be the water._

"Watch it, that ghostly breastplate will fall off."

_Not_ _if I'm not wearing it anymore. Remember, bard? It's gone and buried, by my choice._

"Shut up, Xena." Almost as quickly as my good mood came it soured, and I felt more than witnessed her abrupt withdrawal as well. 

"Sens…Gabrielle?" Kado hitched his stallion and moved to my side, brows climbing.

"It's nothing; I was just talking to myself, Kado." Was I? I wondered. If Xena were in the Elysian Fields, there was no reason she should have been able to remember our separation, much less travel to and fro between the realms of the dead and the living. Elysia was, after all, a place to forget the pains and ties of mortal life, and that she had wanted more than anything in the last month we'd traveled together. I had seen it, recognized the shadows under her eyes, the tired smiles. 

When had our bond ceased being enough for her? When had I failed? I wondered. Gods, I wondered, and I still do.

Brushing aside another volley of tears, I captured Kado's arm, smiling. "Let's check out the inside. Night falls soon."

"Someone is within." Chika drew to my other side, lips drawn tightly. "A messenger of Chin who claims to have journeyed hard and come in only hours."

"Braver than most messengers." _Hebe, protect we bearers of bad tidings._ The prayer ran through my head absently, Hebe struck in my memory as among the few Olympians we had spared, Xena and I.

Stepping inside the spacious dwelling, I was at once struck by the emptiness of the place…not sticklers for crowds of furniture, the eastern peoples, but Yodoshi's estate seemed more lacking than most, and had clearly been abandoned without ceremony. A large area of the floor was marked off by blood stained tile and mats, and as far away from the offerings knelt a clearly nervous man bearing the robes of Chin. "You have a name, and a message?" I forced my tones to softness, coming to rest quietly before him.

Clasping both hands before his heart and bowing, the guest nodded urgently, face expressing his unease. "I am called Fai, and I come in search of the Warrior Princess on behalf of the Lady Kao H'Sin."

"Xena is dead now." 

"Lady H'Sin has heard the tales of Xena's exploits in the ice caves and her continued existence…" Perhaps it was my expression as well, for he stopped mid sentence, horror slowly dawning. "It cannot be."

"Xena is dead." Lifting the leather bad I had brought in with me, I opened it enough to allow sight and swung the black jar before his face. "I oversaw the funeral pyre myself." Before I could lose control I turned away and prepared to leave, jerking the string tight again on the bag. "Tell your lady that she's on her own, whatever her troubles this time."

_Gabrielle…_

_ "_I have no time to play hero. I need to find Eve, and decide what to do; I have to think of a way…"

"Eve?" Her name fell from his mouth more a gasp than whisper. "But you must! Eve, the Elijan, she is my reason for being here. Kao H'Sin believes that the daughter of Xena has been captured. It will take more than we have to offer to spare her. We need the Warrior Princess if her daughter is to live…"

"Eve should still be in Indus, unless she had reason…"

"She traveled further east by request of Xena herself, she said as much before her capture. A missive came from Greece…"

There had been Xena, huddling over that fire and painstakingly putting word to parchment, she had never been a writer…I had asked, demanded to know what was so important to keep her up all night…her face had been so still, her voice so distant in the brushing off.

"Gabrielle, I never expected this to happen." Xena appeared before us, face stark and pale, eyes shining with more vivid clarity than since Fuji. Fai fell backward, shrieking, and Chika grasped his shoulders and pulled him outside.

"Is it true?" I forcefully held my body taunt as we faced off, the anger I felt frightening. "Did you send Eve to Kao H'Sin? Did you know she would be in danger?"

"The missive was my doing, yes, but thanks to Michael I talked to her about the situation only a few days ago and she was fine..."

"Until you told her where we were and set her to worrying? Xena…" Even such a small thing as conversation was difficult. "Xena, how could you? She knew this would happen; Eve was always too perceptive, too knowledgeable about the doings of the future. And now…I wanted to break it to her gently…"

"There was no time for that, Gabrielle." Xena's spirit glimmered briefly, her own show of annoyance. "Eve is tough. She was fine."

"And after _they_ finish with her? You sent your daughter…our daughter…through routes favored by the most bloodthirsty army this side of Indus, alone! She isn't Livia anymore, Xena!"

"Don't you think I know that? I've been trying to get it through your head since we turned her…"

"She's Eve." I refused to allow her to see how the words hurt, and hurt they did…I had always had my reservations about Xena's daughter. As Livia she had reminded me of Hope, too well, and as Eve her redemption seemed ceaselessly unfair when compared to the fact that there had been none for my own child. But by the gods, I had been doing my best, I had come to love Eve in my own way, and the fact that it wasn't enough for Xena stung me. "The Messenger of Eli, the girl that can't swipe a fly without a fit of indecision and regret."

"That doesn't mean she can't fight for life, Gabrielle." The robed arms crossed, lips firming in familiar frustration. "You worked past the goody goody façade to do it often enough."

"That was different." Was it? I wondered even then. "I was learning that I was a warrior. Eve is learning not to be one. I want to preserve her efforts. I have to, Xena; I won't let her lose control…be something she was never meant to be. It would destroy her, facing Livia again. I want to protect her."

"Are you protecting my daughter, or subconsciously representing the little girl I took from you?" Xena's tones had fallen to soft but sharp query.

"I have no intention of bringing Hope into this…" It hurt, gods it hurt, even after all the years. The knife never stopped twisting.

"I didn't mean her." That swift, brutal foursome of words hurt too, the fact that even after all the years I had given over to her since, Xena's hatred for my child still burned so fiercely that even saying her name…acknowledging that she had been a person…was difficult. She seemed brutally aware of the feelings she was evoking, the warrior princess, staring at me and pressing on. "I mean you."

My surprise must have been naked on my face if her own expression was any indication, raw amusement tinged with horrific sympathy. I fought for my voice, cursing her ability to breech my defenses. "Me?"

Her laughter was edged. "Look at you, oh, look at you. Gabrielle, I've stolen your youth, taken your glory and shrouded myself in it; paying no heed to what I left behind. You're an ancient now of spirit, and I fear your body has hardened so that even the relief of death will come hard to you." Her face contorted as if in living pain, moisture gaudily akin to tears but false brimming the sapphire eyes. "I had no right to do that to you."

"No right to love me? No right to give me the sweetest years of my existence, no right…" My fists were balled and I could feel the blood streaming from the jagged little cuts my nails offered, but it was only breaking the surface. I was trembling with anger by then, a cloud of it distorting all that I saw and heard. "How dare you! How dare you condescend to me! I'm not the kid you saw in Poteidaia. I'm not even the girl who left you to marry Perdicus. I chose to become more. You didn't create me, Xena. I created myself. When are you going to accept that I make my own decisions and I have to pay the prices for them? I wouldn't want to do anything less…that's my way. I chose to join up with you, and I chose to stay with you, just as I chose to take up the staff and then the sais, and yes, the chakram. You stop it, Xena! Stop blaming yourself. What good is redemption if you keep finding new things to regret?"

"That particular regret isn't young, Gabrielle." Her hand reached out hesitantly, cupping my chin, her eyes looking away as if my gaze would wound. "But you're right…" Her smile dipped. "…neither are you, bard. I can respect…admire…what you've become, the gods know you aren't my work of art, but I can't help but know that I'll miss your innocence every moment…" Her voice dropped to jagged sorrow, and then steadied, head lifting. "Someday, I hope we can meet again, that girl from Poteidaia and I, or at least that hopeful young Amazon Queen and I."

"Again?" Pulling my hand free, I grasped hers with all the strength I had left, forcing her gaze despite my own doubts and fears. "How can you talk like that, Xena? Who said we were ever parting?" Pulling away when no response came, I turned and strode after Kado outside, back to the horse, burying the aching in my gut beneath a layer of focus. "Don't ever be this stupid again! I'm going after Eve. She, at least, needs me. And I need her. And then…I have hope. I'm getting you back, and that's an Amazon oath."


End file.
